Dark days for Asian journalism

By Alan Boyd, Asia Times Online, 30 January 2003xo

Globalization pressures and the war against terrorism have
brought an abrupt end to the new information age that accompanied
the democratic revival of 1997-98 in much of Asia.

Human rights groups have charted a steady tightening of media
controls since the Asian economic tigers emerged from their worst
financial upheaval with an enhanced commitment to individual
liberties, including free expression.

There are more reporters behind bars than ever before. Newspapers
are being closed at an accelerating rate and radio and TV
stations gagged in the name of national unity. Even the cyber
jockeys are being pulled from their seemingly unassailable
pedestals.

Media watchdogs fear that the brazen manner of the latest purge
could point to a hardening of official attitudes toward
information flows in both the established democracies and their
less-developed neighbors.

The situation in many parts of Asia remains bad, with China
confirming its position as one of the biggest jailers of journalists,
Bangladesh continuing to prove extremely dangerous, Vietnam still
giving no place for press freedom, North Korea being as closed a
society as one can imagine, Nepal ranking first in the wake of the
harsh crackdown on the Maoist insurgency... Burma [Myanmar] still a
highly repressive regime, and regular attacks on press freedom in the
Philippines ... , the World Association of Newspapers warned in
its annual review of press freedom.

Only five years ago, new magazines and newspapers were hitting the
streets daily in Indonesia, as expression flowered under the patronage
of interim leader Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie following the ousting of
hardline president Suharto in May 1998.

Evergreen political weekly Tempo was allowed to reopen, with founder
and chief editor Gunawan Mohamad pledging to develop a culture of
transparency and accountability in the government [and] become a place
that will help defend and expand our freedoms.

Malaysia’s muted opposition media bloomed in the same year, as
the persecution of fallen deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim
triggered a massive backlash against state-owned newspapers and
broadcasters. Reporters took a rare political stance, resigning en
masse from the official media to set up boisterous internet sites that
were able to circumvent the government’s information laws by
exploiting regulatory gaps.

Cyber networks proved equally difficult to contain in socialist China
and Vietnam, posing a bigger threat than traditional radio broadcasts
from the BBC and Voice of America, hitherto the main source of
external news.

External opposition groups took full advantage of the initial
indecision over how to control the Internet. Myanmese exiles were able
to reach their repressed compatriots through alternative
websites. Right-wing Laotian emigres in France and Australia vented
their displeasure with the communists in Vientiane.

Only in South Asia, with its perpetual security overtones, did
conditions worsen. Pakistan suspended all constitutional safeguards
after detonating a nuclear bomb, while Sri Lanka imposed military
censorship on reporting of its civil war.

The liberal breeze elsewhere was not felt only at a consumer
level. Lured by International Monetary Fund (IMF) cash offers for
their beleaguered financial systems, East Asian states began to alter
the entire culture of suppressing official data.

Thailand became the first Asian country to incorporate freedom of
personal information in its constitution, establishing a public
channel for accessing government documents and dismantling state
communications monopolies.

Indonesia scrapped security laws that had been used to silence
reporters for four decades. South Korean president Kim Dae Jung, a
former political prisoner, loosened operating restrictions and
installed a long-time critic as head of the government news agency.

Taiwan legislators launched a campaign for the review of criminal
libel statutes that were hampering the island’s 300 newspapers,
four TV networks and 74 radio stations from offering one of the freest
information sources in Asia.

But there were signs as early as 1999 that it wouldn’t last. As
the IMF and other lending agencies shifted their gaze to new
challenges in Russia and Argentina, the reluctant hand of Asian
autocratic reform stilled and was replaced by a jarring note of
political realism.

The flow of information became a crucial variable as governments
responded to the social and political dislocations of the economic
crisis; some leaders lifted virtually all restrictions on freedom of
expression, while others tightened their hold on what was reported and
how it was presented, noted the Committee to Protect Journalists.

By 2001 the trend was definitely towards the latter, as reporters
learned, often at heavy personal cost, that pluralism and politics do
not mix.

Nor could the media remain impervious to the nationalist outpouring
that followed the IMF’s departure, as critics took aim at the
ostensible foreign bias of the structural reforms packages it had
demanded in exchange for financial bailouts.

Globalization became an emotive issue as multinationals bought up
ailing financial institutions in fire sales, transformed retail
markets and forced the dismantling of state cartels across East Asia.

Newspapers, the only media to gain a large measure of independence in
the reformist spring, were cowed by an insidious strategy that now
viewed commentary critical of the authorities as an attack on the
national interest. With the onset of the global terrorism alert,
reporters found their access to state information blocked on flimsy
security grounds.

Many governments stepped up and justified their repression of
opposition or independent voices using anti-terrorism as an
excuse, reported Reporters Without Borders, the French-based media
watchdog. This included journalists accused, often without proof,
of supporting Maoist ’terrorists’ in Nepal ... Chechen
’terrorists’ in Russia and Tibetan and Uighur
’terrorists’ in China.

Indonesia, widely viewed as the litmus test of press freedom due to
its transformation since 1998, drew heavily on the security card as
conservative Megawati Sukarnoputri brought a pro-military platform to
the presidency.

In November 2001 the Indonesian parliament established a national
broadcasting commission with the power to revoke licenses or censor
content, and stopped TV and radio stations from re-broadcasting
foreign programs.

With its provincial insurgencies in Aceh and West Papua, Indonesia had
ample scope to use these laws. Media monitors were worried that some
of the more liberal governments in the region might follow suit. In
some countries of Southeast Asia where press freedom is usually
respected, there is a fear that restrictions might come back, like in
Indonesia, noted the World Association of Newspapers.

In the Philippines, journalists are especially vulnerable in the
island of Mindanao where separatist Muslim guerrilla groups are
battling the Philippine army. Three journalists have already been
killed there [in 2002] and the Philippines, which has an outstanding
tradition for investigative journalism is, at the same time, a very
dangerous place to practice this discipline, the association
reported.

Philippine newspapers have been at the forefront of Asia’s
liberal media since they played a pivotal role in the overthrow of
dictator Ferdinand Marcos and helped block his attempted comeback in
the mid-1980s.

With their Thai and Indonesian colleagues, Philippine journalists
formed a Southeast Asian Press Alliance in 1999 to maintain the
reformist momentum, and sought a similar pact within the Association
of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). But both fell victim to the
changing domestic climate of press information. Thai reporters walked
out of the ASEAN grouping in late 2000, complaining of a lack of
accountability and transparency.

Thai journalists had their own problems at home, with political
leaders drawing increasingly upon legal avenues to silence critics for
the first time since the end of the military era in the late
1980s. Bank accounts of senior staff at one newspaper were probed by
graft investigators in an apparent bid to lodge fraud charges that
could be used to suppress reports critical of the
government. Journalists were sacked from a TV station owned by the
prime minister’s family.

In the Philippines, president Joseph Estrada, later hounded from
office by media coverage of his alleged corruption, brought an
opposition newspaper to heel with a tax blitz, a freeze on state
advertising revenues and an interview ban on its reporters.

Elsewhere, the pattern has been depressingly similar.

Two conservative journalists were jailed and a right-wing magazine
temporarily banned in South Korea after they published separate
articles questioning the political leanings of senior government
leaders.

Vietnam acknowledged in October that one man had been under house
arrest for two years and another was being investigated for
criticizing the government on the Internet. Access to overseas
websites has been restricted.

Malaysia forced the resignation of an independent newspaper editor and
suspended two of his colleagues last year for publishing an article on
a stalled plot, that was never officially refuted, to kill prime
minister Mohammad Mahathir. Police in Malaysia forced the temporary
closure of website Malaysiakini.com in January after it published a
letter questioning the special economic rights accorded to native
Malays (See Malaysia: Raid bad news for free media January 22, 2003).

Burma briefly banned two privately-owned magazines last year—in
one instance, for carrying an advertisement for a company in
neighboring Thailand, with which it has a strained relationship.

Reporters have been beaten up for writing articles critical of
political leaders in Cambodia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan
and India. China has singled out reporters from ethnic minorities for
harsh treatment and Laotians are required by law to write stories
favorable to politicians.

In all, Freedom House rated only five countries, or 21 percent of all
Asian states, as having a free press in 2002, and the same number as
partly free. The remaining 13, representing 54 percent of the total,
were not free.

There were 11 killings of reporters, making Asia a dangerous news beat
to cover. As of December, another 53 reporters were being held in
Asian prisons, led by Nepal with 18 inmates, Myanmar with 16 and China
with 11.